Rick Ross - 'God Forgives, I Don't'

Album Info

Release Date: July 30, 2012

Label: Mercury

6 / 10
You don’t have to suspend belief to enter Rozay’s world: he’ll do it for you. It’s as if the ex-correctional officer believes in his kingpin persona so implicitly he’s method-acted himself into a superstar. And now he’s revelling in his status by recruiting Jay-Z and Dre on the classic-sounding ‘3 Kings’, getting Usher to croon “fuckin’ you” repeatedly on the clammy ‘Touch’N You’ and engineering the genuinely weird moment when he joins André 3000 on the stoop for the nostalgic ‘Sixteen’. It’s the moment he admits you can’t spend all your time in your own bathroom admiring your 24k toilet – as he does on ‘Hold Me Back’, a Lex Luger-style retread rendered deranged by a vocal which sounds like Ross is on the brink of another seizure. If only it didn’t feel so… serious. Only ‘911’ continues the gilded legacy of Teflon Don, where over rimshots and sirens the Bawse grunts “If I die today/On the highway to heaven/Can I let my top down/IN MY 911!” It’s thrilling. It’s pantomime. It’s what Ross does best. Anyone fancy telling him?